--------------------------------------------------------------------- Atlantic Crossing is Rod Stewart's sixth album, released in 1975, and peaking at #9 on the Billboard Top Pop Albums chart.

The title indicated Stewart's new commercial and artistic direction, a double pun on both his crossing over to Warner Brothers and on his departure to escape the tax structure of the United Kingdom for the sunnier pastures of the jet-set life in Los Angeles, applying for American citizenship at this time. The album was divided into a slow side and a fast side, apparently at the suggestion of Stewart's then-girlfriend, Swedish actress Britt Ekland. Stewart would repeat the format for his next two albums.

Stewart jettisoned his association with Ronnie Wood and the stable of musicians who had been his core collaborators on his classic run of albums fusing soul and folk on Mercury Records. Instead, he used a group of high-ticket session musicians, including the cream from Memphis with The Memphis Horns and three-quarters of Booker T. and the MG's. Produced by Tom Dowd, the famous engineer and producer on records by so many of Rod's heroes during Dowd's time on staff at Atlantic Records, the album continued his approach as at Mercury, but with more polish, more of a deliberate commercial sheen. Atlantic Crossing inaugurated the next phase of Stewart's career, that of a glamorous front-rank rock personality, a constant figure in various tabloids, underlining Stewart's appeal and star power. Stewart would confirm this new direction by the end of year with the announcement of his exit from The Faces, a band of mates rather than hired hands, and as the decade progressed by embracing popular trends in hard rock and disco more fitfully.

Stewart continued his mastery of ballad singing as a track from this album, "I Don't Want To Talk About It," hit #1 in the UK, in tandem with "The First Cut Is the Deepest."

The design of the album was a bit of a marketing mistake. It did not have track listings on the outside and the cover was regularly ripped open.